October 3rd - 9th: A celebration of poetry and literacy in cities across Canada, the UK, and Ireland.

The second annual Random Acts of Poetry week is a Canadian initiative that promotes poetry, poets and literacy in a fresh way to everyday people in their everyday lives. This year, 27 poets from across Canada will be joined by 10 poets from England, Scotland and Ireland, making the event truly international after only one year. Watch for local poets from your community reading poems to people on the street, at bus stops, schools, libraries, hair salons and in local schools.

"What do I like about the notion of random acts of poetry? Its playfulness, its populism, its commitment to the notion that poetry is everywhere, not just in textbooks and English classes."

-- Jannie Edwards

"Poetry is pretty well invisible in the mass media and most people's lives. Random Acts will put poems and poetry books into people's hands - people who would normally not read a poem. Why poetry? Because it's the song of our species and right now, many songbirds are threatened, if not endangered."

-- Elizabeth Zetlin

Birdsong

Another thrush, its white underbelly
like a small shout. And at my feet,
pale lavender, a throat of yellow,
crocus - whose song is spring:
I am always here
under darkness.

I look up to a watercolour sky
the sun heavy on my winter coat
earth squelching with yesterdayıs rain,
clouds thin and meandering and far away
above the darker blue of the Olympics
white feathers of last monthıs snow.

Gray branches flaked with old skin -
at the edge of the long bones, a soft trembling
Slash of silence, then sound
a fever of calling: I am here.
Where are you.